With both technology and human conversation, the meaning of words can result in misunderstandings. There are few better examples of this than our current political dialogue pre-presidential election.

If the political players could recognize the importance of semantics and could agree upon common definitions, the discussions might be just that instead of political arguments and they certainly would become more meaningful. I realize that democracy requires some level of conflict, but it certainly would help when clear definition and precise language are in play.

In the world of information management, semantic technology, artificial intelligence, and machine learning continue to evolve and be used in a variety of applications. It has never been more important to have someone with the expertise and knowledge handling your content, developing your taxonomies, and making your information findable.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.